Dr. Tim's 2009 LPWI Convention Speech

The following is the text of the speech given by Congressional candidate Tim Nerenz at the Libertarian Party of Wisconsin's annual convention April 18, 2009:

To paraphrase John Adams, Liberty is never killed, it commits suicide. For those of us who love Liberty, we can not simply lament its passing; we must act to save it.

When people ask me to define Liberty, I tell them it is the absence of Government in choice. People are not governed – choices are. In Liberty, your choices are governed by your own conscience and beliefs. In Government, those choices are governed by the beliefs of others.

Government and Liberty are therefore opposing principles – for one to expand, the other must necessarily contract. The easiest way to measure how much Liberty we have lost is to understand how big Government has become.

Government at all levels – federal, state, and local – will spend more than $6.5 trillion this year. That is $54,000 for each of the 120 million private sector jobs that ultimately bear the cost; the median income in those jobs is $38,000.

This year, Government will spend over 45% of GDP. Another 15% of GDP is consumed by unfunded mandates on the private sector. That is 60% of GDP taken by Government – by any definition we are already a socialist nation. Sweden spends 52%, France 44%, Canada 41%, Venezuela 30%. That’s right – Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela is only half as socialist as is Nancy Pelosi’s America.

In my lifetime, Government spending has tripled, from 21% of GDP to 60% today. We have gone from 80% free to 40% free in less than my 55 years.

Reckless spending by both parties has created a public debt of over $11 trillion. There is another $6 trillion in unfunded social security liabilities, and an estimated $7 trillion obligation for the bailouts and so-called stimulus spending of recent months.

That is $24 trillion of debt obligations, which works out to $200,000 per job. We are stealing money from two generations of Americans not yet born. $24 trillion is half of the total wealth of all households in the United States – this is unconscionable.

The current economic crisis is not simply a periodic pulse in the business cycle; our economy is collapsing under the unbearable weight of Government taxation, regulation, and manipulation of markets. We have created a corporate welfare state every bit as destructive for its wards as the social welfare state that preceded it.

It is not so difficult to understand how we have reached this point; for 2 decades we consumed more than we produced, spent more than we earned, and borrowed more than we saved. Government engaged in unwise military interventions abroad and unsound economic interventions at home.

It is silly to spend trillions in borrowed money to get the economy “back on track”, when the track leads to ruin. No one in Washington seems to have grasped this rather obvious concept, but why should they? They do not value private prosperity.

If you recall, President Obama did not say “spreading your wealth around”; he said “spreading the wealth around”. With that choice of one single word, he told us all we need to know about the direction this nation is headed.

He does not believe it’s your money. He doesn’t think you earned it. It was allocated to you, and allocating resources are what government does. The power to grant rights and dispense benefits is why elections matter, and they won.

He is not alone in his belief that wealth exists separately from the person who created it. Collectivists like Tammy Baldwin believe that resources belong to the whole of society, not to its individual members; so do rights and responsibilities. They are wrong.

Libertarians are the last vanguard of individualism and exceptionalism in America. We are not confused or timid about what we believe. Rights belong to individual persons. Wealth is created by individual persons, owned by individual persons, and exchanged between individual persons.

The purpose of government is to provide an environment in which rights are protected and individuals can reach their fullest potential, limited only by talent, character, and initiative. It is not the duty of government to protect us from our choices, it is its duty to protect our right to make them ourselves.

Libertarians celebrate real diversity, the inequality of outcomes that comes from equality of opportunity. We do not seek the common good; we seek the uncommon better. We do not want to be equally poor; we want to be unequally rich; rich in every sense – rights, choices, opportunities, wealth, knowledge, and freedom.

We do not want our possibilities constrained by some dullard’s view of what is possible for him. Your success doesn’t diminish mine – it enhances it. Your achievement does not take my possibilities away, it creates new ones. Your choices do not threaten me; they provide a reason for me to examine my own.

Socialists like Tammy Baldwin will never understand this; they are frightened by freedom, they are jealous of real achievement, they seek order, control, and sameness. They have no concept of where wealth comes from, how it is created, and how it is destroyed. You don’t learn much by spending other people’s money.

Let’s be frank, Republicans can’t win the 2^nd District – there are too many Democrats in it. Libertarians at least have a shot. We are pro-choice on everything; we can connect with every single voter on at least one decisive issue of choice – healthcare, schools, guns, drugs, property, choice at 18, pensions, fairtax, military deployment.

My campaign will focus on the themes of Free Trade, Limited Government, Individual Liberty, Private Property – FLIP is the acronym that people remember. We will attack the socialist positions of Tammy Baldwin and we will propose alternative solutions to the nation’s problems that are both principled and practical.

Our campaign will address specific issues, but it will not be about how to govern; it will be about who governs. I want you to govern your earnings, your family, your property, your schools, your life. Government should be your servant, not your master, and the servant has a job description – it’s called the Constitution.

I know how to read it. Government does what we tell it in the blank ink; the white space belongs to us, not to Tammy Baldwin and her socialist buddies. I want to go Washington to take back our white space – I hope you will let me try.

You can do that by voting for Tim, Not Tammy.

Tim Nerenz is the Libertarian Party Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's 2nd District. To support Dr. Tim's campaign, please visit the campaign website at www.timnerenz.com.

Bailing Out Of The Bailout

A curious trend seems to be developing in the financial community; the banks are bailing out of the bank bailout plan.

Last week, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimond told Wall Street Journal analysts that his firm would seek to give back their $25 billion in TARP bailout money: “we could pay it back tomorrow, we have the money.”

A few days earlier Goldman Sachs announced it wants to pay back its $15 billion of TARP funds. On Friday, it was CitiGroup. Ditto from Wells Fargo, who also announced a couple billion dollar profit in the 1^st quarter. Even smaller banks, like West Virginia’s Centra bank, want to opt out of TARP.

One little problem – the Treasury Department won’t take it back. Tell me we didn't just turn over the whole world's banking system to guys who don't know that loans are supposed to be repaid.

There is nothing else about the bailout saga that ever made sense to me, so I guess I should not be surprised at this either. This whole TARP thing stunk to high heaven from the get-go, and now it looks like a poker game where everyone is using house money – all bluff and no blink.

A recent headline in the financial section of the New York Times called it “Showdown Between Banks and Regulators”. If this were a death match, even the Dalai Lama might secretly be hoping for a tie.

The banks argue that the terms imposed by the government on TARP funds are operationally onerous. That is a load – they don’t like the bonus payment restrictions. Treasury counters early repayment might weaken the banks. That is a load – they want to force the banks to participate in the PPIP bank rescue plan that no one has signed up for yet.

They must all think we are stupid beyond repair. Most of us have raised kids that lie better than that.

This is really simple. 80% of us opposed the bank bailouts. The banks want to give the money back. They obviously don’t need it. It’s our money. Take it back, and then give it back to us. How many Ivy League economists does it take to mess that up?

President Obama promised transparency, and the growing legions of tech-savvy bloggers, tweeters, facebookers, and myspacers are holding him to it. The only thing transparent in this administration so far is its transparent appetite for government control of everything - banking, autos, healthcare, energy, education, trade, housing, speech.

Tammy Baldwin voted for all of the bailouts – all of them. In March, she issued a press release telling us she was outraged and promised to “recover taxpayer money” when Congress got busted for approving millions in AIG bonuses. This is billions, and nobody has to do anything to recover it – just get out of the way when they bring it back.

You don’t need a Ph.D. in economics to judge the wisdom of TARP; when bankers won’t take free money, that’s all you need to know.

Vote Libertarian. Vote for Tim, Not Tammy

The Thing About Taxes

The thing about taxes isn’t just that they take too much of our money - it’s that they spend it on things we don’t believe in. They whip us with our own belts.

Today’s Tea-Party protests drew together people from across the spectrum of interests and political philosophies to protest excessive taxation. The diverse Tea Party participants were united by a common feeling of injustice on two fronts: 1) the increasing power of government and its takings, and 2) the objectionable uses to which confiscatory taxes are being put.

Objectionable is an individual thing. In a diverse society, government can’t spend a single dollar without offending somebody who would oppose deeply the purposes for which it is being spent. The more government spends, the more it has to take, and the greater the number of people it inevitably must offend in the process. This does not seem like a difficult concept to grasp; I don't understand why so many politicians don't see what all the fuss is about.

This is a 50/50 nation, and has been for some time. The last lopsided election was 20 years ago. Clinton won because Perot split the “no way” vote. Bush 43 won by a hair and then again by 3 hairs. President Obama was a few points over half.

Yet each new President claims a mandate and starts cramming his agenda down our throats as if he won every single vote in every single precinct from Maine to California. Even people who vote for a party or candidate don’t support every single thing they want to spend our money on.

Pacifists don’t want their money confiscated and spent on war. Gun owners don’t want their money confiscated and spent on weapons bans. Pro-lifers don’t want their money funding abortions. Free traders don’t want their money spent on protectionist subsidies. And so on it goes, issue by issue; no matter what the government spends taxpayer money on, it is going to spend someone’s money on something they absolutely abhor.

And this problem is not resolved by replacing one party with the other. An election merely determines which half of the nation will seethe for the next 4 years. No matter who wins, they will spend more of your money than the guy before did. Republicans didn’t cut spending when they had the chance, and Democrats put us on the Homeland Security terrorist list for even bringing it up.

The way to quit abusing its citizens is for government to spend less of our money, and let us spend it ourselves. We should not be compelled to spend our own money against our self-interest. It is the economic equivalent of self-incrimination in a legal proceeding. This objection to economic self-incrimination is the moral underpinning of the Libertarian principle of limited government.

It is not about how the money is spent; it is about who decides how it is spent. It’s not how much, it’s who. No matter how much I might disagree with your choices, they are not truly my concern unless I am forced to pay for them to be carried out. When that happens, we have been set against each other by our own government, advocating for confiscation of each other’s wealth to advance our own beliefs and self-interest. The conflict is artificial; it is induced by predatory legislators and fueled by a tax system so full of inequities that every single person thinks they are being unfairly treated.

Americans do not want to be set against each other any longer. We especially do not want to be set against each other by a government whose purpose is to protect our individual rights and liberties.

That is the real message of the Tea Party protests; it’s not just about money, it’s about dignity and respect for each other. Today, hundreds of thousands of people joined together to take back some of the latter for themselves. Today was not a day for candidates to talk; it was a day for candidates to listen.

This is what I heard.

Charitable Choice

The easiest way to get a Republican to back off on limited government is to threaten that if a single dollar is cut from the federal budget every aged and infirmed person in America will die. Libertarians don’t scare so easily.

Democrats demand that government spending be the exclusive yardstick of compassion. For too long, we have given them a pass on their claim to ownership of the caring franchise; it is time to call them out.

Just because Libertarians oppose the current government monopoly on social service delivery does not mean that we lack compassion. Just the opposite; we propose alternatives to government – call it Charitable Choice – that improve the quality of care. Let me illustrate using the example of the most sacred of the social services sacred cows – disability assistance.

In the state of Massachusetts, only 67% of the money the government spends on disability assistance programs actually leaves the government. 33% is spent by government on government for government. This is probably typical of most states, I just happened to be looking at Massachusetts budget data recently and statistic caught my eye.

And not all of that 67% that escapes government reaches people with disabilities. A portion goes to grants to non-profits used for awareness, education, community organizing, research, conferences, administration and lobbying for more government funding. And organizations that do provide direct personal services have overheads that reduce the funds available for service delivery to clients.

I don’t know how much is siphoned off, but let’s say conservatively 25% (of the 67%). That would mean only 50% of the original taxpayers’ dollar actually made it to a disabled person or their families in the form of subsidy or service.

The organized disability lobby (and they are very well organized) is screaming that we need to do more, more, more. Ok, here is how to do more the easy way - cut out the middle man, and provide a 100% tax credit for direct charitable giving.

Here’s how it would work. When I make a donation to a qualified caregiver, I would receive a 100% tax credit for each dollar I have contributed. Not a 35% deduction, a 100% tax credit. The government no longer needs that dollar, because I have already distributed myself.

Notice that I limited the government by $1 and increased funding for people with disabilities by 50% (67 cents to $1). Socialist must be grinding their teeth about now, because it’s not supposed to work that way; their everyone-will-die argument is leaking oil.

But there’s more. I am going to select which specific charity I give to based on how efficient and effective they are at providing services to those in need. If agency A has a 40% overhead rate and agency B has a 10% rate, agency B gets my cash, because I want the maximum amount of my dollar to get to persons with disabilities.

Not done yet - if agency C works wonders with autistic kids and agency D just mails it in, then agency C gets my cash. I don’t care if the organizations are profit-seeking, or not-for-profit, what I care about is how they perform. If the government is the best provider of services (anything is possible) then I simply don’t donate to others and they get the $1 by default. But they have to earn it, they can’t just take it.

And now the fun part: ok, you big government socialists, who doesn’t care about sick children now? Who is the greedy, heartless bastard now? I just put 50% more money in the hands of needy people; now go ahead and make your case for taking it back. Tell us who you are going to give that money to; you know who they are, because they are getting the money now – bureaucrats, lobbyists, trial lawyers, advocates, activists, the marketing guys over at Victimhood, Inc.

No, wait - don’t tell me; tell it to the single mom of the severely retarded child. Go on, look her right in the eye, and tell her you want to take away that extra money the Libertarians gave her. Tell her who you will give it to, and why they are more important than her child. Not so easy as calling Republicans names, is it?

There are many other types of social services in which charitable choice makes sense, and there are some where it probably doesn’t. There are also many different mechanisms by which choice could be implemented – vouchers, opt outs, exchange markets, direct donation, etc.

The point is that Libertarian principles – free trade, limited government, individual liberty, private property – are not just theoretical abstractions; they provide practical solutions to problems that 50 years of the socialist experiment have failed to solve. We don’t just offer alternatives, we offer better alternatives.

Charitable Choice will provide more funding to people who need it, will improve the quality of service provided, and do so at a lower cost. Win-win-win.

Vote Libertarian. Vote for Tim, Not Tammy.

Katrina Kare

Tammy Baldwin has made nationalized health care her legislative priority. My response can be summed up in two words: Katrina Kare.

Before we turn over another 17% of our GDP to the government, we might reflect on how they are doing with the auto companies, banks, and insurance companies we have recently placed in their custody. That should be the end of it; but alas, advocates for more government deal with intentions and theories, not consequences and realities.

Health care is different than cars and banks. If GM goes under, you can still buy a Hyundai; if you can’t get angioplasty, you die. We want the best care available and we want it fast. “Best” and “fast” are adjectives not used often to describe government – think FEMA, IRS, TSA, HUD, Medicare, and the VA. Would anyone think the probabilities of breakthrough drugs for things like cancer or autism would improve with Barney Frank telling the pharmaceutical companies what to do?

Democrats are bound and determined to nationalize health care. Why? Probably because the Europeans do it – this seems to be the socialists’ equivalent of the capitalists’ keeping up with the Joneses. Where’s mom when we need her: “and if the Danes and Belgians jumped off a cliff…………..?”.

President Obama is delivering on his promise of hope; we are all hoping somebody else will pick up the tab. In February, his budget requested $650 billion to extend health insurance to 47 million uninsured Americans. A month later, the Congressional Budget Office revised the cost of the plan to $1.5 trillion. It is a sad commentary when the doubling in cost of a government program is no longer newsworthy. By the way, that is $12,000 for each job in the private sector - that's who picks up the tab.

Massachusetts mandated universal compulsory coverage in 2006; this is the template for the Obama/Baldwin first step towards government-run healthcare. In less than three years, costs there have gone up 42% and now the Governor is threatening to impose rationing of care if the bureaucrats running the system don’t do it themselves. Tammy wants to impose this misguided plan nationwide. Bad idea.

The rationale du jour for imposing socialized medicine here in the U.S. is that we spend more than other countries on healthcare. So what? We also spend more on Hip-hop music, so should we create a Department of Rap? The music would suck, and 50 Cent would be $1.50 Cent after just a couple rounds of earmarks.

Other countries keep their cost down by rationing health care and paying their doctors and nurses less. 5% of Americans consume 50% of healthcare; if spending less is the goal, we could just withhold treatment and let them die. That would cut our cost in half – take that, Sweden. That is a ridiculous way to measure healthcare quality.

Every few years, some international agency (always headquartered in Europe) issues a report that finds (surprise, surprise) that our healthcare system is worse than the socialized systems in Europe. They are self-serving, self-important, and dead wrong. It is not difficult to determine who has the best healthcare system in the world – follow the people who need treatment. Europeans come here; Ted Kennedy did not go over there.

I can walk today thanks to some of the best neurosurgeons and nurses in the world. They work here – in the United States - because they make more money here and they have better equipment and facilities. I had immediate access to CAT scans and MRIs because they are far more plentiful here – one of the chief reasons U.S. healthcare costs more.

True, a free government wheelchair would have been more affordable, but it is not an upgrade. And in economic terms, society is far better off with me producing and paying outlandishly high taxes than collecting disability checks. The taxpayer didn’t pay for my surgeries, my employer did. So I say no thanks to Tammy’s Katrina Kare.

I don’t want the next heart surgeon available, like at Cost Cutters. I don’t want cheaper nurses who got their jobs through a civil service exam. I don’t want the government deciding what I can and can’t be treated for. What I do want is a simplified billing system that does not take an army of clerks to make incomprehensible. The guy who invented the phrase "explanation of benefits" should be prosecuted for fraud. It is a non-explanation of why benefits were denied.

A recent Harvard study reported that nearly 1/3 of U.S. “healthcare” costs are administrative costs – all the paperwork driven by government regulations on providers and insurers. That is what’s wrong with health care in this country – accountants and lawyers and bureaucrats who regulate the living crap out of it.

$2 to provide a service, and $1 to bill for it? No other industry would stand for its costs of billing services to be half of the cost of providing them. You can only have this kind of foolishness in an industry where there is too much government intervention. If it were not prohibited, providers and insurers would have streamlined these non-value-added functions years ago. We are paying 50% more than the cost of the care itself – and not because every single provider thinks this is a really great way to run a business.

Democrats want government to run health care. Republicans want to improve healthcare by making the tax code more complicated – I never did understand that one. Both want to tax your employer-provided healthcare benefits.

Libertarians support deregulation of healthcare and health insurance, and we would never tax your benefits. Deregulation would increase quality, reduce cost, and allow for innovation in treatment, service, and pricing – just as it has done in the telecommunications and transportation industries. There is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We have the best healthcare in the world; it’s our record keeping that is all screwed up.

Why don’t you go to work on that, Tammy?